Happy New Year! Another year has flown by and I spent the first week of January laying out plans for Crystaline Randazzo Photography for 2017.

I spent lots of time last year thinking about how I could create moving stories for my clients. I began incorporating story design into my work. This started by establishing a process to help my clients identify their long-term goals, their specific audience, and what stories had the best visual components. Not to toot my horn too much, but this thinking led to some pretty amazing storytelling.

This year I’ll continue doing strategic communications consulting and media making in Nepal. I’m working on a new project in education and I can’t wait to share what we create. I’ll also share a series of posts here on how your nonprofit can tell better stories.

In the process, you may see some posts that were originally posted at NGOStorytelling.com, a site that exists to inspire and inform humanitarian storytellers. I co-edit that space with my friend and collaborator Laura Pohl. It’s where we geek out about media and storytelling for nonprofits. I blog there monthly, and I hope you’ll check it out.

I do one pro bono project each year for a nonprofit organization that I love. It’s really rewarding to give back to my community. But this year, I won’t be doing any free work. Instead, I’m working on a personal project that’s close to my heart. It’s the first time I’ve designated time for this kind of thing. I’m excited (and nervous) to try something completely new.

I’ve been building my freelance business since 2010. When I started this business, I just wanted to make beautiful photographs. But over time I learned that being a media maker isn’t enough for me. I don’t want to photograph trainings or conferences. I want to capture the impact of the important work that nonprofits do. I want to spend time with the people who share their lives in my films. And I want the media I create to connect with donors on an emotional level.

It feels important for me to hold space for these stories. Over the years many things have changed for me – and I don’t know what will shift this year – but I’m excited to get out there, find amazing stories, and share them with the world.

I can’t believe that I am eight months into the year of story! It’s been amazing journey and I can feel my approach to storytelling changing in small but profound ways. Sometimes changing your approach is uncomfortable. It makes you ask questions that you’d never considered and challenges you to do things differently.

I’ve read dozens of books, spent countless hours in online courses, and done some serious digging into the storytelling community. So I wanted to share some of my favorite discoveries from this journey. I hope that they will help you in your storytelling journey.

Power Your Podcast Storytelling by Alex Blumberg on Creative Live

I don’t have a podcast, but this is the best course I have ever purchased on Creativelive. Alex is the master of the interview and gives very specific instruction on how to create and direct a good interview. Then he helps you craft powerful stories. Prepare to have your sock blown of! He has single handedly changed that way that I interview for multimedia pieces.

The Storytelling Nonprofit: A Practical Guide to Telling Stories That Raise Money and Awareness by Vanessa Chase Lockshin

I have followed Vanessa’s blog for the last year and took an online course she offered. I got to meet her at the Nonprofit Storytelling Conference in 2015 so I expect this post makes me an official fan girl. Her book primarily focuses on writing good stories for fundraising and donor retention. But fear not, visual storytellers, there’s plenty of solid information that we can apply to the stories we create. I often refer back to her story structure formula: Connection, Character, Conflict, Resolution, and Call 2 Action. This is invaluable when I am editing a story together.

Shameless self-promotion alert! I did an amazing interview with Kate Lord for NGOStorytelling that was a major light bulb moment in my storytelling journey. In the interview, Kate talks about her process of inclusive editing. She works with beneficiaries throughout the editing process to make sure they are comfortable with the way the story is being told. I realized that most of the stories that I created had zero input from the beneficiaries after the shoot. I can’t wait to start collaborating with beneficiaries to tell the stories that they want to share. This just goes to show that no matter how long you’ve been telling stories you always have something more to learn.

The Living Brave Semester by Brené Brown

This probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me well, but when I learned that Brené Brown was going to be offering an online course, I couldn’t sign up fast enough. This course is based on her books Rising Strong & Daring Greatly and it might seem like a strange choice in the line up storytelling resources. But I believe that in order to engage in honest storytelling, you need to be in touch with your own story. Brené started me on a journey of self discovery that has allowed me to be a more vulnerable person who holds sacred space for the people who wish to share their story with me. And she’s going to start the second round of this course in January 2017!

Ira Glass On Storytelling

My favorite discovery on this journey is a four part video series by Ira Glass. You’ll probably remember that I wrote a post on the first video of his series. But he has three more that are absolutely inspirational. Every aspiring artists should watch these and be inspired by his words.

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is a gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quite. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume o work that you will close the gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve every met. It’s going to take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You just gotta fight your way through it.”

This series gave me such hope about what is possible with my work if I just keep producing. So if your discouraged or unsure if you should move forward. Watch it and be inspired!

I recently wrote a blog on the basic components of a photo story for NGOStorytelling (a site I run with my dear friend Laura Pohl). A few weeks later I heard from TechSoup who asked me if I'd be willing to give a webinar on the subject. Techsoup is an awesome nonprofit that helps other nonprofits navigate technology. They have an awesome catalog of with discounted software, hardware, services, and training for nonprofits. This year they started a webinar series called 2016 Storymakers Campaign to help inspire nonprofits to tell better stories.

The webinar has already happened but you can listen to the recording here! You just have to click the recording and register. I loved working with Tech Soup and my talented co-instructor Nanette Wong. It was so exciting to give my first webinar and help inspire other storytellers to make better stories.

I'd love to know what you think of the webinar? How can you use the formula to tell better stories?

About Me.

I’m a professional photographer and multimedia storyteller. I primarily work with nonprofits and international organizations to share their stories. My approach is creating vibrant, honest, and emotional photography.